LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

IRAN: Opposition Outside Support Grows

The LA Times reports that Team Obama has concluded Iran's opposition movement is here to stay, and is exploring ways to support it unofficially.  A heralded adviser to Israeli PM Netanyahu who predicted the fall of the Shah in 1977 (he fell in 1979) is influencing Israel towards offering more support for the opposition, in preference to a high-risk strike at Iran's nuclear facilities.

Israel Says "No!" to Joe, Abbas Says "Yes" to Israel

While V-P Joe Biden surely felt diplomatically sandbagged by Israel's announcing new East Jerusalem settlements upon his arrival, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas assented to talks, despite his prior pledge not to negotiate with Israel unless settlements were frozen.  So what did Biden do, and what might Team Obama do, as payback to Israel?....

Team Obama's Mideast Mischief

Mideast superstar Barry Rubin eviscerates Team Obama's Mideast policy.  BR shows how overtures to Syria have been rebuffed & Iran stalls as it ADDS CRUISE MISSILES TO ITS ARSENAL.  Radicals see an emerging Iran-Syria-Turkey axis.  With Turkey a NATO member, such a development would be a disaster.  Read BR's op-ed in full.  As Turkey's old secularist order unravels, a Congressional Subcommittee raises anew the red flag of the 1915 Armenian genocide, which will infuriate Turks and move them faster away from the West.  Brilliant.

Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Foreign Policy, UN

Obama Courts Unlovely Syria

Former top national security official (under Bush 43 & Reagan) Elliott Abrams  examines President Obama's quixotic courtship of Syria.  Alas, the picture is quite disquieting....

Is Londonistan Becoming Hamastan?

Author Melanie Phillips details how Hamas-style tactics, including Lawfare--are roiling London's world.  She references a report by the Intelligence & Terrorism Information Center (Tel Aviv) that includes at the top a description of Hamas jihadist propaganda aimed at children in London.  Terror expert Steven Emerson adds chilling detail on Islamism's advance in the UK.

Hamas Hit: Dubai Deception?

The Real Clear World blog The Compass informs us that a Palestinian paper published a report that Hamas leaders think the Dubai hit of a Hamas commander was engineered by two Arab countries.  The plot thickens....

Europe: "Ban the Burqa!"

The LA Times reports that majorities in major European countries support banning the wearing of the burqa in public.  The burqa is a veil that covers everything save the eyes.  And in England a top Muslim cleric issued a "fatwa" (decree) unequivocally condemning terrorism as un-Islamic....

LFTC - Lawafare Predators Pounce on Predator Drones

Legal scholar Kenneth Anderson warns that international elites--lawyers, human rights activist and their UN allies are targeting the use of drones as illegal.  He notes that laws of war may not cover all covert drone strikes, and proposes instead to resurrect traditional self-defense arguments.  An ominous sign is since from top administration lawyers who decline to defend their President's policy publicly. Lawfare types are deploying five weapons against drone strikes....

LFTC - Health Care, Climate Change & Palestinians

What do Health Care, Climate Change & Palestinians have in common?  Nothing, you say?  Guess again.  Ruth King's wonderfully acid 3-pager explains the common connection between three seemingly unrelated issues, and details the two-state fiction's components....

LFTC - Falklands Oil: Will Obama Risk Losing UK?

While Britain drills for oil off the Falkand Islands, Argentina cannot get foreign firms to drill near its coastline, due to the kleptocratic mess its would-be Evita, Christina Kirchner, has made of the country (along with her husband, who preceded her and may, it seems, succeed her too. Is war brewing?....

LFTC: Let Europe Go Home?

National security expert A. C. Bacevich looks art NATO's sorry performance in Afghanistan and suggests that the US give up attempts to use NATO outside Europe.  Europeans, Bacevich writes, are unwilling to fight wars save in defense of their home ground and otherwise cleave to social welfare statism above all else.  SecDef Robert Gates bluntly told the Europeans that they need to do more (full Gates text).There are dark spots, but bright spots also....

LFTC - Russia: Deep Cuts Arms Control Trap

Arms expert Peter Huessy posted a superb 5-pager on the perils of Team Obama's efforts to further deeply cut American's nuclear arsenal in bilateral negotiations with Russia.  Among the grave danger that can arise is that smaller powers have greater incentive to increase their arsenals as we shrink ours....

LFTC - Afghan War: Crummy Karzai

A WSJ editorial notes that Afghan leader Hamid Karzai assailed the US because of civilian casualties in a recent air strike.  LET'S SEE: WE TAKE WORLD-CLASS PAINS TO LIMIT COLLATERAL CASUALTIES, OUR SOLDIERS RISK THEIR LIVES TO SPARE CIVILIANS, AND WE PROP UP KARZAI DESPITE THE ELECTION HE STOLE LAST FALL.  We should, quietly, should tell him to shut up.

LFTC - Dubai: Who Hit Hamas Heavy?

Two columnists differ on who killed a Hamas commander in a Dubai hotel room recently.  Con Coughlin of the Daily Telegraph accuses Israel treating Britain cavalierly, by stealing British passport identities.  But Tom Cross of the National Post sees a possible frame job.  A WSJ op-ed sees Israel the near certain culprit and adds how new surveillance technologies make this type of operation increasingly anachronistic.

LFTC - Karachi Raid: The Mysterious East

A Gray Lady front-pager revels more about the shadowy operation in Karachi that netted Mullah Omar's top commander.  It now seems that Mullah Bandar was picked up by luck rather than design, that he is talking little and that his capture undermines chances for Pakistan to negotiate with Taliban chiefs. Yet another tale in the complex mosaic of a counter-insurgency with double-game allies in Rudyard Kipling's East & West.

Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security, Foreign Policy

LFTC - Privacy: Europe's Lawfare v. US Warfare

Incredibly, the European Union has invoked privacy concerns to end cooperation with an American effort to track terrorists via the SWIFT financial network.   Incredible details....

LFTC - Russia's India Technology Leap; America's Space Technology Surrender

As India announces that within one year it will test a 3,000-mile range nuclear-capable missile, which will bringing Shanghai within range (China & India fought an inconclusive war in 1962), an ex-Bush 43 defense official details the new Russian super-fighter's technical development: how it compares with the F-22 and India's role as technology co-developer.....

LFTC - China's Aussie Play; Aussies Embrace Uncle Sam

The Washington Post reports that China's investment & influence in Australia is rising.  It is now Australia's premier trading partner, and that an influx of Chinese is changing Down Under in ways that Aussies resent.  The WP also reports that in the past decade that Australia deepened its ties to the US, partly in response to China's growing influence.

Read more about how Uncle Sam & Down Under have drawn closer....

LFTC - Israel: Uncertain Iran Intel

Former Israeli Defense Forces chief Dan Halutz said that Israel does not know where all Iranian nuke sites are located.  Halutz, architect of Israel's disastrous failure (along with ex-PM Ehud Olmert) to finish of Hezbollah in the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, likely is right this time.  Halutz, unsurprisingly, does not want Israel to take the lead in confronting Iran.

The plain reality is that gleaning accurate timely intel about what goes on inside dictatorships requires a mole placed high inside the country's governing, military or intelligence structures.  Western powers rarely can do this.  If Israel has managed it, so much the better.  We likely have not.  Which is why our intel services almost certainly have no good idea as to where Iran is in its march towards The Bomb.

Bottom Line.  Put simply, we must decide what to do with far less info than we wish to possess.  Placing faith in our intel, after the debacle in Iraq & given a long history of unpleasant intel surprises on nuclear powers--e.g., North Korea in 2002 (announcement) & 2006 (actual test) there is no reason to think we know enough to cut it close as to when to take decisive action.

Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, National Security, Nuclear Proliferation, Arms Control, WMD, Foreign Policy

LFTC - Afghan War Disaster?

Author-journalist Ann Marlowe writes in a WSJ op-ed that we are courting disaster in Afghanistan.  She fingers the failure of Team Obama to prevent Hamid Karzai from winning a fraudulent election--the loser being a leader more honest and more -pro-US.  Also Team Obama is not getting the necessary Pakistani push against Taliban in Pakistan tribal areas.  Marlowe says that from 2002 - 2006 policy was mostly headed in the right direction, but now there is too much focus on the military and not enough on the civilian side.

LFTC - IRAQ: Still Vital

Henry Kissinger counsels keeping Iraq in our strategic calculus, as it is central to Mideast geopolitics & will remain so even after we withdraw troops....

LFTC - Tony Blair's Iraq War Defense

A WSJ editorial notes Tony Blair's stalwart defense of his decision to join the US & Australia n the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, despite the WMD intel debacle; Blair noted that Saddam could have rapidly rebuilt his WMD programs had sanctions been lifted, and that a nuclear Iraq & Iran could well have been the Mideast regional future.  The WSJ reports on Blair's pointed responses:

LFTC - Afghan Strategies: An Expert Speaks

Author & Afghan expert Ann Marlowe has published several informative pieces on the situation inside Afghanistan, from a ground view: "Fighting a Smarter War in Afghanistan"; "Afghanistan's Economy Blooms"; "Smarter Than a Surge: What Afghanistan Really Needs".  She acutely assess the situation and finds many ways that our effort can be improved there, identifying major mistakes along the way (such as supporting Hamid Karzai after his fraudulent re-election, and failing to gather enough pertinent information to leverage our presence.  All three articles I highly recommend to LFTC readers.  (Our Afghanistan Ambassador expressed similar views in diplomatic cables, according to the New York Times.)

There are more articles on Afghanistan and other topics at Ann Marlowe's website.

LFTC - Beating the Doomsday Clock

Former Secretary of Defense Keith Payne, long a missile defense maven, dismantles the latest adjustment of the Doomsday Clock by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  The clock was set on January 14, 2010 to 6 minutes before midnight, one minute earlier than during the Bush years and one minute later than the original 1947 setting.  The Doomsday Clock Timeline reveals that twice it was set at 2 minutes away (1949, when the Russians detonated their first atomic device & 1953, after the US tested the world's first hydrogen bomb).  Once it was set a 3 minutes away (1984, when Ronald Reagan allowed the Soviets to walk away from the negotiating tale, due to his refusal to pre-emptively abandon the US Euromissile deployment & thus accept the then-existing Soviet Euromissiles already in place).  Its earliest setting was 18 minutes in 1991, when the Cold War ended as the Soviet Union imploded.

A Weekly Standard piece notes that scientists foolishly speak as if scientific prowess equates to strategic acuity:

This is no doubt music to the ears of the atomic scientists, who feel themselves to be especially qualified to judge these matters.  But knowing in detail how the bomb works does not necessarily grant one any special insight into the complex geopolitics of nuclear posture, deployments, bargaining, and hosts of other issues.  To believe otherwise is a conceit that stretches back to Oppenheimer himself, but one that ignores the enormous gulf between technical proficiency—even scientific brilliance—and political wisdom.  It’s the job of statesmen, not scientists, to think through the latter, and they may not always come to the same conclusion.

Tellingly, Payne notes an unimpeachable source for the PR focus of the Clock, in its original setting:

The keepers themselves recognize the lack of precision underlying their showy claims: Kennette Benedict, publisher of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, apparently observed that the Doomsday Clock originally was set “at seven minutes to midnight because that’s where it would look best in a design sense.” One can only wonder: Where was the scientific substance in this aesthetically pleasing timekeeping?

Bottom Line.  Scientists often have high IQs to go with equally high Ego Quotients.  The Bulletin's Clock is set by dovish scientists who fear conservatives and worship liberals, and calibrate their clock accordingly.  The two, when combined, often yield (excuse the nuclear pun) low-yield foreign policy quotients.

LFTC - IRAN WMD Intel: NOW They Tell Us!

Amidst the "all Haiti + Massachusetts news all the time" sturm und drang of the past week is this little item that normally might have provoked more media interest:

The Washington Times reported that US intelligence now believes Iran NEVER STOPPED its nuclear weapons program.  The information is contained in a draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to be presented to the White House, in February at the earliest:.  The WT article offers a view on the new Iran intel posture:

Differences among analysts now focus on whether the country's supreme leader has given or will soon give orders for full-scale production of nuclear weapons.

The new consensus emerging among analysts in the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community on Iran's nuclear arms program is expected to be the highlight of a classified national intelligence estimate nearing completion that will replace the estimate issued in 2007.

The unclassified summary of the 2007 document said the U.S. intelligence community had "moderate confidence" that Iran's nuclear weapons work had halted in 2003. In a footnote, it stated that weapons development was defined as warhead design and not the enrichment of uranium, which has continued unabated contrary to the Iranian government's agreement not to develop uranium enrichment techniques outside International Atomic Energy Agency controls.

A senior U.S. military officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity last week revealed that the new argument among analysts is over Iran's decision to move forward with weaponization.

"There is a debate being held about whether the final decision has been made. It is fair to argue that the supreme leader has not said, 'Build a nuclear weapon.' That actually does not matter, because they are not at the point where they could do that anyway."

The officer, who is knowledgeable about operational matters and intelligence on Iran, said Iran's nuclear program is well-advanced and moving toward the point at which a weapon could be built.

"Are they acting as if they would like to be in a position to do what the supreme leader orders if he gives the thumbs up at some point down the road? The answer to that is indisputably yes," the officer said.

There is more Iran news.  Iran warned that it might strike at the more than 90 warships now patrolling the Persian Gulf, were it attacked.  Jordan's General Intelligence Department (GID) said that Iran was behind a failed attempt to assassinate Israeli diplomats; the attack was an ostensible retaliation for the killing of an Iranian scientist, which Iran blames on Israel & America.  (In reality, this seems a Reichstag fire ploy by the Iranian regime.)  Amidst all this, what does China do?  China urged more "flexibility" in considering stronger UN sanctions against Iran.  In a business-as-usual move, a German firm has signed a major natural gas equipment deal with Iran.

Retuers reports that Iran has formally notified the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it rejects parts of the deal the IAEA has offered Iran.  Iran has February plans: it will launch three new communication satellites; such launches serve also as ballistic missile tests applicable to military use.  The US, for its part, plans to test its Ground-based Midcourse Missile (GMD) interceptor in the Pacific Ocean in February; the test will mimic an Iranian missile aimed at the US.

Two Bush-43 public diplomacy senior officials urge a soft-power strategy to move the Iranian rulers toward less aggressive policies, coupled with stronger sanctions.

Bottom Line.  The November 2007 US NIE on Iran's nuclear program was, as critics then charged, a political document, authored by analysts who believe that a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities is more risky than reliance upon traditional deterrence of a nuclear-armed Iran.  This latest NIE, though apparently not politicized, comes with a President in power even less inclined to launch a preventive strike at Iran than his predecessor.  But Israel was never fooled, and the ball thus remains in Israel's court, as to whether a strike will be launched against Iran to delay its crossing the nuclear weapons threshold.

LFTC - Cellphones In Saudi: Kiddies Beware!

The UK's Mail Online reports that the Saudis have sentenced a 13-year-old girl to 90 lashes and two months in prison, for a truly heinous crime: taking a cellphone to school.  Chalk up another milestone for votaries of the Religion of Peace.

LFTC - IRAN Update: Opposition Intensifies, Regime strikes Back

The WSJ reports that the Obama administration is shifting its policy emphasis to reflect an emerging view that the Iranian regime is weaker than previously thought.  Team Obama doesn't support regime change, but it realizes that it is a real possibility.  A major Swiss commodities trading firm is suspending gasoline shipments to Iran, fearing US sanctions.  Stateside, a major federal court appellate case will address whether a major anti-regime group, the MKK, should remain designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO); the administration intends that the designation be kept, but security consultant James Zumwalt argues the label should not apply.

AEI Iran maven Ali Alfoneh sees opposition influence growing, and notes the five points set forth by opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi:

That's why the Islamic Republic's political leadership is bound to ignore opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi's five-point plan to solve the political crisis in the country: Responsible government, free and fair elections, freedom to political prisoners, freedom of the press, and the right to establish political parties.

Bottom Line.  American policy must put regime change first, sanctions second and quixotic negotiations third.

LFTC - Afghanistan/Iraq/Pakistan: Drone Dramas

Afghanistan/Iraq.  A New York Times front-pager details how intelligence gathered from drones is so voluminous that it swamps the ability of of analysts to process the data.  In 2008 a total of 24 years' Afghan + Iraq intel for one person to continuously watch was gathered, triple the 2007 total.  Thousands of analysts are digesting 24/7 data flows, and the Air Force is seeking advice from network television on how to process the flood:

So Cmdr. Joseph A. Smith, a Navy officer assigned to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which sets standards for video intelligence, said he and other officials had climbed into broadcast trucks outside football stadiums to learn how the networks tagged and retrieved highlight film.

“There are these three guys who sit in the back of an ESPN or Fox Sports van, and every time Tom Brady comes on the screen, they tap a button so that Tom Brady is marked,” Commander Smith said, referring to the New England Patriots quarterback. Then, to call up the highlights later, he said, “they just type in: ‘Tom Brady, touchdown pass.’ ”

Lt. Col. Brendan M. Harris, who is in charge of an intelligence squadron here, said his analysts could do that. He said the Air Force had just installed telestrators on its latest hand-held video receiver, and harried officers in the field would soon be able to simply circle the images of trucks or individuals they wanted the drones to follow.

But Colonel Harris also said that the drones often shot gray-toned video with infrared cameras that was harder to decipher than color shots. And when force is potentially involved, he said, there will be limits on what automated systems are allowed to do.

“You need somebody who’s trained and is accountable in recognizing that that is a woman, that is a child and that is someone who’s carrying a weapon,” he said. “And the best tools for that are still the eyeball and the human brain.”

A WSJ editorial sees drone strikes as enabling targeting terrorist leaders while minimizing collateral casualties.  Team Obama's drone record is indeed impressive:

Though you won't hear him brag about it, President Obama has embraced and ramped up the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. As tactic and as a technology, drones are one of the main U.S. advantages that have emerged from this long war. (IEDs are one of the enemy's.) Yet their use isn't without controversy, and it took nerve for the White House to approve some 50 strikes last year, exceeding the total in the last three years of the Bush Administration.

From Pakistan to Yemen, Islamic terrorists now fear the Predator and its cousin, the better-armed Reaper. So do critics on the left in the academy, media and United Nations; they're calling drones an unaccountable tool of "targeted assassination" that inflames anti-American passions and kills civilians. At some point, the President may have to defend the drone campaign on military and legal grounds.

The case is easy. Not even the critics deny its success against terrorists. Able to go where American soldiers can't, the Predator and Reaper have since 9/11 killed more than half of the 20 most wanted al Qaeda suspects, the Uzbek, Yemeni and Pakistani heads of allied groups and hundreds of militants. Most of those hits were in the last four years.

"Very frankly, it's the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership," CIA Director Leon Panetta noted last May.

Pakistan.  The WSJ editors rebut critics who complain of excessive collateral civilian casualties (who, to be fair, include top counter-insurgency expert Dave Kilcullen, former adviser to the US forces in Iraq.  Relying on local, who may well be either Taliban or sympathizers of same, is very dicey.  Save for small children, one cannot determine, in a war without uniforms, who is a combatant or supporter of combatants versus who is not.

Bottom Line.  Drone killings exemplify the benefits of precision-munition warfare: targeting terrorists as narrowly as feasible, short of rifles.  To allow critics to take away this valuable weapon would be catastrophic.

LFTC - Stratfor: Afghan Base Assassination of CIA Operatives

The following excellent essay by Statfor co-founder George Friedman on the suicide bombing assassination of top CIA operatives in Afghanistan is reprinted by permission from Stratfor:

The Khost Attack and the Intelligence War Challenge

By George Friedman and Scott Stewart

As Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi exited the vehicle that brought him onto Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, on Dec. 30, 2009, security guards noticed he was behaving strangely. They moved toward al-Balawi and screamed demands that he take his hand out of his pocket, but instead of complying with the officers’ commands, al-Balawi detonated the suicide device he was wearing. The explosion killed al-Balawi, three security contractors, four CIA officers and the Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID) officer who was al-Balawi’s handler. The vehicle shielded several other CIA officers at the scene from the blast. The CIA officers killed included the chief of the base at Khost and an analyst from headquarters who reportedly was the agency’s foremost expert on al Qaeda. The agency’s second-ranking officer in Afghanistan was allegedly among the officers who survived.

Al-Balawi was a Jordanian doctor from Zarqa (the hometown of deceased al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). Under the alias Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani, he served as an administrator for Al-Hesbah, a popular Internet discussion forum for jihadists. Jordanian officers arrested him in 2007 because of his involvement with radical online forums, which is illegal in Jordan. The GID subsequently approached al-Balawi while he was in a Jordanian prison and recruited him to work as an intelligence asset.

Al-Balawi was sent to Pakistan less than a year ago as part of a joint GID/CIA mission. Under the cover of going to school to receive advanced medical training, al-Balawi established himself in Pakistan and began to reach out to jihadists in the region. Under his al-Khurasani pseudonym, al-Balawai announced in September 2009 in an interview on a jihadist Internet forum that he had officially joined the Afghan Taliban.

A Lucky Break for the TTP

It is unclear if al-Balawi was ever truly repentant. Perhaps he cooperated with the GID at first, but had a change of heart sometime after arriving in Pakistan. Either way, at some point al-Balawi approached the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the main Pakistani Taliban group, and offered to work with it against the CIA and GID. Al-Balawi confirmed this in a video statement recorded with TTP leader Hakeemullah Mehsud and released Jan. 9. This is significant because it means that al-Balawi’s appearance was a lucky break for the TTP, and not part of some larger, intentional intelligence operation orchestrated by the TTP or another jihadist entity like al Qaeda.

The TTP’s luck held when a group of 13 people gathered to meet al-Balawi upon his arrival at FOB Chapman. This allowed him to detonate his suicide device amid the crowd and create maximum carnage before he was able to be searched for weapons.

In the world of espionage, source meetings are almost always a dangerous activity for both the intelligence officer and the source. There are fears the source could be surveilled and followed to the meeting site, or that the meeting could be raided by host country authorities and the parties arrested. In the case of a terrorist source, the meeting site could be attacked and those involved in the meeting killed. Because of this, the CIA and other intelligence agencies exercise great care while conducting source meetings. Normally they will not bring the source into a CIA station or base. Instead, they will conduct the meeting at a secure, low-profile offsite location.

Operating in the wilds of Afghanistan is far different from operating out of an embassy in Vienna or Moscow, however. Khost province is Taliban territory, and it offers no refuge from the watching eyes and gunmen of the Taliban and their jihadist allies. Indeed, the province has few places safe enough even for a CIA base. And this is why the CIA base in Khost is located on a military base, FOB Chapman, named for the first American killed in Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion. Normally, an outer ring of Afghan security around the base searches persons entering FOB Chapman, who the U.S. military then searches again at the outer perimeter of the U.S. portion of the base. Al-Balawi, a high-value CIA asset, was allowed to skip these external layers of security to avoid exposing his identity to Afghan troops and U.S. military personnel. Instead, the team of Xe (the company formerly known as Blackwater) security contractors were to search al-Balawi as he arrived at the CIA’s facility.

A Failure to Follow Security Procedures

Had proper security procedures been followed, the attack should only have killed the security contractors, the vehicle driver and perhaps the Jordanian GID officer. But proper security measures were not followed, and several CIA officers rushed out to greet the unscreened Jordanian source. Reports indicate that the source had alerted his Jordanian handler that he had intelligence pertaining to the location of al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. (There are also reports that al-Balawi had given his handlers highly accurate battle damage assessments on drone strikes in Pakistan, indicating that he had access to high-level jihadist sources.) The prospect of finally receiving such crucial and long-sought information likely explains the presence of the high-profile visitors from CIA headquarters in Langley and the station in Kabul — and their exuberance over receiving such coveted intelligence probably explains their eager rush to meet the source before he had been properly screened.

The attack, the most deadly against CIA personnel since the 1983 Beirut bombing, was clearly avoidable, or at least mitigable. But human intelligence is a risky business, and collecting human intelligence against jihadist groups can be flat-out deadly. The CIA officers in Khost the day of the bombing had grown complacent, and violated a number of security procedures. The attack thus serves as a stark reminder to the rest of the clandestine service of the dangers they face and of the need to adhere to time-tested security procedures.

A better process might have prevented some of the deaths, but it would not have solved the fundamental problem: The CIA had an asset who turned out to be a double agent. When he turned is less important than that he was turned into — assuming he had not always been — a double agent. His mission was to gain the confidence of the CIA as to his bona fides, and then create an event in which large numbers of CIA agents were present, especially the top al Qaeda analyst at the CIA. He knew that high-value targets would be present because he had set the stage for the meeting by dangling vital information before the agency. He went to the meeting to carry out his true mission, which was to deliver a blow against the CIA. He succeeded.

The Obama Strategy’s Weakness

In discussing the core weakness in the Afghan strategy U.S. President Barack Obama has chosen, we identified the basic problem as the intelligence war. We argued that establishing an effective Afghan army would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, because the Americans and their NATO allies lacked knowledge and sophistication in distinguishing friend from foe among those being recruited into the army. This problem is compounded by the fact that there are very few written documents in a country like Afghanistan that could corroborate identities. The Taliban would seed the Afghan army with its own operatives and supporters, potentially exposing the army’s operations to al Qaeda.

This case takes the problem a step further. The United States relied on Jordanian intelligence to turn a jihadist operative into a double agent. They were dependent on the Jordanian handler’s skills at debriefing, vetting and testing the now-double agent. It is now reasonable to assume the agent allowed himself to be doubled in an attempt to gain the trust of the handler. The Jordanians offered the source to the Americans, who obviously grabbed him, and the source passed all the tests to which he was undoubtedly subjected. Yet in the end, his contacts with the Taliban were not designed to provide intelligence to the Americans. The intelligence provided to the Americans was designed to win their trust and set up the suicide bombing. It is therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that al-Balawi was playing the GID all along and that his willingness to reject his jihadist beliefs was simply an opportunistic strategy for surviving and striking.

Even though encountering al-Balawi was a stroke of luck for the TTP, the group’s exploitation of this lucky break was a very sophisticated operation. The TTP had to provide valuable intelligence to allow al-Balawi to build his credibility. It had to create the clustering of CIA agents by promising extraordinarily valuable intelligence. It then had to provide al-Balawi with an effective suicide device needed for the strike. And it had to do this without being detected by the CIA. Al-Balawi had a credible cover for meeting TTP agents; that was his job. But what al-Balawi told his handlers about his meetings with the TTP, and where he went between meetings, clearly did not indicate to the handlers that he was providing fabricated information or posed a threat.

In handling a double agent, it is necessary to track every step he takes. He cannot be trusted because of his history; the suspicion that he is still loyal to his original cause must always be assumed. Therefore, the most valuable moments in evaluating a double agent are provided by intense scrutiny of his patterns and conduct away from his handlers and new friends. Obviously, if this scrutiny was applied, al-Balawi and his TTP handlers were still able to confuse their observers. If it was not applied, then the CIA was setting itself up for disappointment. Again, such scrutiny is far more difficult to conduct in the Pakistani badlands, where resources to surveil a source are very scarce. In such a case, the intuition and judgment of the agent’s handler are critical, and al-Balawi was obviously able to fool his Jordanian handler.

Given his enthusiastic welcome at FOB Chapman, it would seem al-Balawi was regarded not only as extremely valuable but also as extremely reliable. Whatever process might have been used at the meeting, the central problem was that he was regarded as a highly trusted source when he shouldn’t have been. Whether this happened because the CIA relied entirely on the Jordanian GID for evaluation or because American interrogators and counterintelligence specialists did not have the skills needed to pick up the cues can’t be known. What is known is that the TTP ran circles around the CIA in converting al-Balawi to its uses.

The United States cannot hope to reach any satisfactory solution in Afghanistan unless it can win the intelligence war. But the damage done to the CIA in this attack cannot be underestimated. At least one of the agency’s top analysts on al Qaeda was killed. In an intelligence war, this is the equivalent of sinking an aircraft carrier in a naval war. The United States can’t afford this kind of loss. There will now be endless reviews, shifts in personnel and re-evaluations. In the meantime, the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan will be attempting to exploit the opportunity presented by this disruption.

Casualties happen in war, and casualties are not an argument against war. However, when the center of gravity in a war is intelligence, and an episode like this occurs, the ability to prevail becomes a serious question. We have argued that in any insurgency, the insurgents have a built-in advantage. It is their country and their culture, and they are indistinguishable from everyone else. Keeping them from infiltrating is difficult.

This was a different matter. Al-Balawi was Jordanian; his penetration of the CIA was less like the product of an insurgency than an operation carried out by a national intelligence service. And this is the most troubling aspect of this incident for the United States. The operation was by all accounts a masterful piece of tradecraft beyond the known abilities of a group like the TTP. Even though al-Balawi’s appearance was a lucky break for the TTP, not the result of an intentional, long-term operation, the execution of the operation that arose as a result of that lucky break was skillfully done — and it was good enough to deliver a body blow to the CIA. The Pakistani Taliban would thus appear far more skilled than we would have thought, which is the most important takeaway from this incident, and something to ponder.

LFTC - Afghan Base CIA Bomber: Obama's Other Intel Mess

Author Gerald Posner offers clues suggesting that the Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA top operatives in Afghanistan was aided by Islamist elements within Pakistani intelligence.  (I erroneously reported that the Jordanian had been one fo the agents killed, when in fact he was the double-agent killer.)  Posner recounts Byzantine intrigue among CIA, Afghan & Pakistani intel operatives.  At gut level it seems that the locals, with less scruples & ore knowledge, have a leg up.  Not good news.

Ex-CIAer Reuel Marc Gerecht sees a collapse of CIA tradecraft in the successful assassination; conversely, he sees solid tradecraft from al-Qaeda.  He sees unusual skill in their operation, but notes that standard practice of screening turned agents and of limiting exposure of top agents in a single location were ignored.

A Washington Post front-pager provides the latest details on the Chapman Base attack:

The Jordanian doctor arrived in a red station wagon that came directly from Pakistan and sped through checkpoints at a CIA base in Afghanistan before stopping abruptly at an improvised interrogation center. Outside stood one of the CIA's top experts on al-Qaeda, ready to greet the doctor and hear him describe a way to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, the organization's No. 2 and a man long at the top of U.S. target lists.

The Jordanian exited the car with one hand in his pocket, according to the accounts of several U.S. officials briefed on the incident. An American security guard approached him to conduct a pat-down search and asked him to remove his hand. Instead, the Jordanian triggered a switch.

A sharp "CLMMMP" sound coincided with a brief flash and a small puff of smoke as thousands of steel pellets shredded glass, metal, cement and flesh in every direction.

A moment that CIA officials in Washington and Afghanistan had hoped would lead to a significant breakthrough in the fight against al-Qaeda instead became the most grievous single blow against the agency in the counterterror war.

Virtually everyone within sight of the suicide blast died immediately, including the al-Qaeda expert, who led the CIA team at the base; a 30-year-old analyst; and three other officers. Also killed were two American security guards contracted by the agency, a Jordanian intelligence officer and the car's driver. At least six others standing in the carport and nearby, including the CIA's second in command in Afghanistan, were wounded by pellets that had first perforated the vehicle.

The WP story cites multiple sources that confirm Gerecht's assessment, even given updated information:

Those at the scene on Dec. 30 had been trying to strike a balance between respect for their informant -- best demonstrated, in the regional tradition, by direct personal contact -- and caution, illustrated by the attentiveness of the security guards, according to CIA officials.

But more than a dozen current and former government officials interviewed for this article said they could not account in full for what they called a breach of operational security at the base in Afghanistan's Khost province. Advance pat-downs and other precautions are common in an age of suicide bombers, and meetings are kept small and remote. None of these sources would agree to be identified by name, in many cases because of their former or current work as covert operatives.

Several intelligence sources said the principal mistake was in trusting the bona fides of the Jordanian doctor, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who had never previously been invited to the base. The meeting was arranged with help from the Jordanian officer, who was among those waiting at the site for Balawi to arrive and was killed.

"You get somebody who has helped you and is incredibly important for the information he's going to potentially provide -- these are prize possessions," said a former CIA field officer. "Somebody comes, and it's like a celebration that they're coming. It's good to make them feel welcome. It's good to make them feel important."

The man who would prove to be a deadly attacker, the former officer said, "was heralded as a superstar asset. . . . So you get an important visitor coming. So you go out and meet him. . . . Is it bad tradecraft? Of course."

CIA Director Leon Panetta defended the performance of the CIA operatives killed in the Chapman Base bombing.  He rejected the tradecraft arguments.

Bottom Line. Whether tradecraft was flawed or not, the ability of al-Qaeda to penetrate a forward base in a theater of war and kill several top intelligence operatives is deeply disturbing.  And if Panetta is right, it is even more disturbing.  A failure of tradecraft is, presumably, readily correctable.  But a successful attack mounted in the face of proper tradecraft is harder to see being prevented next time.

LFTC - Obama, Israel & the Settlements Freeze

Hudson co-founder Max Singer authored an exceptionally good article explaining Israeli PM Netanyahu's decision to accept a 10-month partial freeze on West Bank settlements.  In short, Netanyahu calculated that he could accept a limited freeze, play for time, and still oppose the disastrous total freeze Team Obama wants.  This avoided an early open break with America.  And if Iran heats up, the Palestinian issue will be put in its proper place, near the bottom of Mideast problems to worry about.  Read Singer's excellent piece.

LFTC - IRAN 2010: Year of Decision

The Huffington Post offered the most electrifying report of 2009: the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has readied his jet to flee to Russia if necessary.  The Times of London suggests that revolution may indeed be in the air, and offers the key factor:

Once a regime has lost the support of its police and armed forces, revolution is almost inevitable. Marcello Caetano, the successor of the Antonio Salazar, Portugal’s long-time dictator, attempted to prolong his fascist rule and grip on overseas colonies but when the monocled head of the Army, General Antonio de Spinola, wrote a book suggesting that the policy was untenable, the regime’s military underpinning was shattered. In 1974 revolution swept the country and the police did nothing to halt it.

The Tehran killings of Sunday, December 28 raised confrontation between regime and opposition to a new level, as the dead protesters included the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.  Of particular import is that protesters in the increasingly violent confrontations are no longer calling for an honest election count, but instead call for death to their oppressors and an end to the regime.  The regime responded by arresting prominent opposition figures.  

Iran's activities in 2009 accomplished one thing: It proved what serious damage the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) did to American efforts to stop Iran's drive for nuclear club membership.  Repudiated within months by three foreign governments (UK, France, Israel), the NIE was a blatantly political document, designed to undercut Team Bush in its final year.  It was, put simply, prepared by intelligence and State Dept. officials who were prepared to deal with a nuclear Iran.

In December the House of Representatives punctuated the repudiation of the NIE by passing 412-12 the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act.  Team Obama responded by urging the Senate to delay passage, in favor of pursuing additional diplomacy--despite even Hillary acknowledging zero progress in negotiations this year.  RFE/RFL interviewed Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) re Iran; Lieberman hopes for quick sanctions action early next year.

The administration is preparing targeted sanctions to be implemented after the Dec. 31 deadline passes.  According to the Washington Post:

Sanctions would probably be imposed in three ways -- at the U.N. Security Council, with like-minded countries and unilaterally -- and U.S. officials would pursue them more or less simultaneously, with initial emphasis on pressing forward at the United Nations in February. France, an advocate of firmer pressure on Iran, will hold the rotating chairmanship of the Security Council that month.

During the George W. Bush administration, the Security Council thrice imposed relatively mild sanctions on Iran for its failure to heed calls to halt uranium enrichment. Those efforts also largely targeted elite parts of the government, but concern about not harming ordinary Iranians has been heightened by the rise of a nascent opposition movement, diplomats said.

The precise contours of the administration's sanctions policy are still being decided, but high on the list of targets is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the arm of the military that has been centrally involved in the attacks on demonstrators and that is playing an increasingly bigger role in Iran's economy. In 2007, the Bush administration cited the Revolutionary Guard and a group of front companies for their links to terrorism and proliferation -- including a major contractor known as Khatam al-Anbiya that channeled billions of dollars a year to the Guard from its activities in oil, construction, transportation and other industries.

The increasingly central role of the Revolutionary Guard in both the economy and the protests, officials said, makes it a target of possible resentment among the Iranian public -- and for tough U.S. sanctions. But officials insist that sanctions would not be linked to the protests. "It is only coincidental that at the same time we reached the deadline, the Iranian government has a bloody crackdown," said a third U.S. official. "It has only served to highlight the nature of the regime."

After Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, the highest-ranking Republican retained by Obama is Treasury Undersecretary Stuart A. Levey, who spearheaded Bush's targeting of the Guard and nine of its front companies. Now Levey and his team have identified additional front companies, all of which could be targets for action.

But Ralph Peters notes that the end-2009 deadline for Iranian compliance with international rules has now expired, and wonders if the mullahs even worry over what Obama will do:

This is another debacle of Obama's own making. It's a fundamental rule of playgrounds and security policy that you shouldn't make threats you can't or won't back up. But Obama's in love with the sound of his own voice. The fanatics in Tehran are more interested in the sound of a nuclear blast.

Desperate leftists in our country still compare Obama to Bush, insisting that, well, Obama's not doing so badly, not really, not if you really think about it.

Bush, for all his faults, worried our enemies. Obama amuses them.

Obama's primary threat against the Tehran thugs has been sanctions. OK, let's see if he can get internationally recognized sanctions that actually bite. I'm offering 100-to-1 odds in Tehran's favor.

Iran, for its part, warned the Western powers that unless its own counter-offer is accepted by the end of January it will produce medical-grade uranium (19.75$ enriched, vs. 3.5% for commercial fuel) on its own.

Charles Krauthammer sees feckless appeasement in Team Obama's ignoring the rising protest movement whilst continuing to try, despite massive evidence of futility, to engage a clerical fascist regime Hell-bent on nuclear status.  Senator Kerry wants to go to Tehran, which as the WSJ editors note would empower the clerics and discredit opponents.  Robert Kagan warns that Team Obama is ignoring the resurgent big-power rivalry and the rise of autocracies with divergent national interests, in favor of utopian dreams.  Richard Perle charts the many dreams of President 44, and hopes he wakes up in time to protect us from serious harm.  Bill Kristol makes hash of 44's platitudes about history being on democracy's side, noting the totalitarian revolutionary triumphs of 1917 (Russia), 1933 (Germany), 1949 (China) and 1979 (Iran).

The Washington Post reported that Iran is mastering all aspects of nuclear weapons production:

The internal documents and expert analysis point to a growing Iranian mastery of disciplines including uranium metallurgy, heavy-water production and the high-precision explosives used to trigger a nuclear detonation. Although U.S. spy agencies have thought that Iran's leaders halted research on nuclear warheads in 2003, European and Middle Eastern analysts point to evidence that Iran has continued to hone its skills, as recently as 2007....

Iranian scientists must still rely on outsiders for certain components and materials, such as high-strength metals used in making advanced centrifuges and longer-range missiles. But the remaining technical gaps are shrinking, according to an internal memo drafted by top Iran analysts at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Excerpts from the never-published draft were leaked to a nonprofit group in October.

"Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device," the memo states.

There is more, too, as to "heavy water" activities:

In late October, IAEA inspectors who visited Iran for a first look at the secret plant also made a surprise discovery of 600 barrels of heavy water, a toxic liquid used in making plutonium, during a routine visit to one of Iran's lesser-known nuclear facilities near the city of Isfahan.

A recent IAEA report called on Iran to "provide information on the origin" of the heavy water.

"It was a complete surprise," said a European diplomat who agreed to talk about the internal debate on the condition of anonymity. "We assumed that the Iranians had purchased it from elsewhere, but no one really knew. No one believes they could have made it at the existing plant" -- a small facility at Khonab that has been mostly idle since it opened three years ago.

There is more in this superlative WP article, as to importing high-speed cameras from Russia, which can film sequences and thus aid in designing an effective triggering device, and as to Russian detonator experts visiting Iran in 2003--the very year that the 2007 NIE asserts Iran stopped its weapons design program.  (The New York Times article on the captured Iranian weapon design document is far more limited and tentative than the WP version, and rings less plausible given Iran's activities.)

Meanwhile, Iran recently tested its most advanced solid-fuel missile, with range sufficient to reach Israel and part of southern Europe.  On Dec. 20 ABC News This Week Sunday, top Obama adviser David Axelrod told George Stephanopoulos: "No one has any illusions about what the intent of the Iranian government is."  (In case anyone at Team Obama HQ does, this op-ed by the Marine commander of the Beirut barracks that was bombed Oct. 24, 1983 tells us that those who masterminded the operation are now senior Iranian defense officials.)

Claudia Rosett writes on how Iran is circumventing sanctions globally.  AEI's foreign policy VP, Danielle Pletka, explains why a nuclear Iran could not be contained.  A warning shot across the bow came when, on December 18, Iranian forces crossed into Iraq and seized an oil well located on disputed border territory.  Stratfor co-founder George Friedman called this a signal that Iran will not sit passively should stronger sanctions our military options be implemented (video clip, 5:15).  If this is how a non-nuclear Iran acts, what can one expect from a nuclear Iran?  One incitement to Iran going nuclear is Team Obama's aim to sharply cut and ultimately phase out America's nuclear arsenal, which has generated strong push-back from senior national security officials throughout the administration.

Alas, the Pentagon announced recently that a 15-ton bunker-buster superbomb slated for operational status June 2010 is now delayed to December 2010.  The six-month delay in readiness for the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) could be crucial, given Iran's timeline for attaining nuclear critical status, but then again no one believes that 44 will order a strike on Iran's facilities.

On the plus side, Gen. David Petraeus noted that the United Arab Emirates could take out the entire Iranian Air Force with its fleet of 70 Block 60 F-16s.  (The UAE's F-16s are the most advanced models, giving them better F-16s than US pilots fly!)  An even bigger possible plus: one opposition leader predicts the current government will not last the full four years.  The regime's recent admission that its jailers beat three demonstrators to death while in captivity was a further blow to its declining prestige.  Also on the plus side, soldier-blogger Michael Totten notes that Sunni Arabs now care more about stopping a nuclear Iran than they care about the Arab-Israeli conflict; this is a reality that eludes America's foreign policy establishment. Evidence for this: Daniel Pipes points to growing common sense in Egypt & Saudi Arabia, in polls showing fear of a nuclear Iran trumping Israel as an issue. 

But even on the plus side there is now a major minus: On Dec. 20 the Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri died at age 87; even before the June 2009 protests, he was the leading clerical figure in Iran, with prestige exceeding that of the Islamist regime's Supreme Guide, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  This New York Times story gives excellent detail on Montazeri's career.  Con Coughin's WSJ op-ed details clerical opposition rising.  The Washington Post reports that among the protesters confronted with violence Sunday at demonstrations are three sons of the Ayatollah Khomeini.  As the New York Times story reported, Montazeri had been designated to succeed that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but the two had a falling out over Khomeini's increasingly brutal, repressive policies shortly (it was all of three months) before Khomeini departed this Earthly vale.  A more disastrous falling out, more ill-timed for world and Mideast peace over the past 20 years, can scarcely be imagined. 

Mideast maven Robin Wright sees a possible Berlin Wall Moment in the works inside Iran.  A WSJ editorial profiles a top dissident recently arrested by the regime.  A Daily Beast post recounts how the author's friend in Tehran simply disappeared.  Opposition leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi denounced the regime's latest crackdown and pledged his own life if need be, to see this through.

A professor of Iranian studies warns that economic distress may play a role comparable to that played at the expense of the Shah in 1979:

According to Transparency International, Iran is today one of the most corrupt economies in the world. It also has the ignominy of topping the list of all countries in terms of brain drain. Each year, between 150,000 and 180,000 of the country's best and brightest leave the country. The yearly cost to Iran for this brain drain alone is estimated to be almost equal to the yearly cost of the Iran-Iraq War, according to the World Bank.

Falling oil prices are now forcing the regime to reduce the almost $100 billion of subsidies it pays to keep quiet a discontent population. The reserves it accumulated when oil prices were $150 per barrel have long been squandered by Ahmadinejad on harebrained schemes like carelessly making loans to start businesses that ended up fueling a real estate bubble, rather than creating jobs.

But this inevitable reduction of subsidies is sure to further reduce the standards of living for the poor and middle classes. This will make the horizon grim for the triumvirate of Revolutionary Guard commanders, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad who now rule Iran.

A politically discontent population forced to experience an unexpected economic downturn was a key element of the recipe that overthrew the Shah from the Peacock Throne in 1979. Poetic justice that the same sudden change in the country's economic fortune—and even the same use of religious rites and rituals for political purposes that brought the clerics to power 30 years ago—is now coming back to haunt them.

Ex-CIAer Reuel Marc Gerecht cheers us by citing three "unstoppable" ideas Montazeri stood for:

Yet in the end Montazeri, who died last week at 87, caused, and will continue to cause, untold trouble for the regime. By the end of his life, he had come to represent the fusion of three unstoppable ideas: that the Islamic Republic as built by Khomeini and led by Khamenei is illegitimate; that only democracy can redeem the republic and save Islam as a vibrant faith capable of shaping society's mores; and that clerics who support Khamenei are intellectual dullards and moral reprobates. It was Montazeri's religious passion, his argumentative rigor, his common-man roots, and his courage that drove the regime nuts. His disciples are everywhere.

One dissident cleric predicts regime collapse in a Der Speigel interview.  Asia hand Selig Harrison sees ethnic unrest as the threat the mullahs fear most, but sees the West unwilling to play the card, lest it lose its hope for engaging Iran on the nuclear issue:

The biggest threat to the ruling ayatollahs and generals in multi-ethnic Iran does not come from the embattled democratic opposition movement struggling to reform the Islamic Republic. It comes from increasingly aggressive separatist groups in Kurdish, Baluch, Azeri and Arab ethnic minority regions that collectively make up some 44 percent of Persian-dominated Iran’s population.

Working together, the democratic reform movement and the ethnic insurgents could seriously undermine the republic. But the reform movement, like most of the clerical, military and business establishment, is dominated by an entrenched Persian elite and has so far refused to support minority demands.

What the minorities want is greatly increased economic development spending in the non-Persian regions, a bigger share of the profits from oil and other natural resources in their areas, the unfettered use of non-Persian languages in education and politics and freedom from religious persecution. Some minority leaders believe these goals can be achieved through regional autonomy under the existing Constitution, but most of them want to reconstitute Iran as a loose confederation or to declare independence.

Meanwhile, the regime is becoming increasingly militarized.  But another Iran maven sees mercantilization more likely, supplemented by paranoia.  One huge point (if true), reported Dec. 31 on Fox's "America's Newsroom" show, by their London reporter Amy Kellog (someone who has always struck me as a sharp, solid tele-journalist): She said that some sources say that 50 percent of the Revolutionary Guard is leaning toward siding with the protesters.  If true, the regime's days may truly be numbered.  On "Fox News Sunday" Bill Kristol said that 2010 just might see the fall of the Iranian regime and its replacement by a regime less dangerous, and better disposed in towards the United States.

At "The National Interest" foreign policy maven Nicholas Gvosdev calls for supporting covert action against the Iranian regime.  He sees negotiation with no chance, economic sanctions unlikely to work due to lack of Allied cooperation, allies unwilling to do heavy lifting:

That leaves covert, paramilitary action. This requires good intelligence to pinpoint the location of sites critical to Iran’s nuclear program, and the teams and equipment necessary to infiltrate Iran and cause damage to the program, to either delay it or cause it to shut down altogether. But the administration has to be prepared for the risks and consequences of such a step. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards can accelerate their proxy attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq and Afghanistan, raising the costs for Obama’s team in both of these sensitive theaters of action. And Iran could easily escalate its mischief in the Persian Gulf, particularly around the Straits of Hormuz. In essence, the administration would have to be prepared to wage a secret, undeclared war targeting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

This is an altogether unattractive proposition, for a variety of reasons. Yet failure to get the grand diplomatic victory needed to prove the wisdom of engagement leaves the administration with few other options, other than conceding defeat (or hoping that internal dynamics in Iran lead to an overthrow of the current regime). Obama and his team are going to have some very hard choices when it comes to Iran in the coming months.

A WSJ op-ed by a former US ambassador to Syria & Israel, who also served as a political attache in at our Embassy in Moscow during the Carter years, recounts how three seismic events in 1979 helped shape the Islamist threat we now face and the wars we now fight: (1) the Iranian revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini's clerical fascist regime to power; (2) the Islamist seizure of Mecca that scared the Saudi regime to curry favor with Sunni radicalism by financing the global spread of Sunni extremism; (3) the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that gave birth to Islamist jihadism.

Bottom Line.  Team Obama may indeed have no illusions as to the intentions of the Iranian regime.  But clearly they have illusions about how best to try to stop Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold.  Regime change--offering meaningful support to the huge protest movement that now seeks a change in government rather than more honesty from the existing regime--is apparently out.  The kind of severe sanctions with sufficient bite to plausibly derail Iran's quest are apparently equally out.  The ball in 2010 thus remains where it has been since the 2007 NIE took military force of Team Bush's Iran option table: in Israel's court.

LFTC - Obama's Poland SOFA Sale

The Christian Science Monitor reports that as part of a Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Poland, America will deploy limited missile defense on Polish soil.  These missiles will not be, as the earlier system was, capable of intercepting ICBMs, which travel much faster than shorter range systems.  The new SOFA is better than nothing, but that Moscow was given even a partial veto last September remains a huge mistake.

LFTC - Nobel in Norway: "We-Talk" Words With "Me-Bomb" Manners

President Obama's Nobel Address.  There was much in the President's Nobel Address to admire.  He began modestly, by acknowledging that his award was for achievements hoped for, rather than completed:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations – that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize – Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela – my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women – some known, some obscure to all but those they help – to be far more deserving of this honor than I.

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries – including Norway – in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.

Then he courageously affirmed the need for use of force--to a body whose awards have all too frequently gone to peacenik types:

In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed. But there has been no Third World War. The Cold War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling a wall. Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty. The ideals of liberty, self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud.

A decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats. The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.

Moreover, wars between nations have increasingly given way to wars within nations. The resurgence of ethnic or sectarian conflicts; the growth of secessionist movements, insurgencies, and failed states; have increasingly trapped civilians in unending chaos. In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sewn, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, and children scarred.

I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

He then affirmed the need, at times, to use violence to stop barbarian threats, and saluted our soldiers as peacemakers:

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago – "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak –nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.

Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions – not just treaties and declarations – that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another – that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

He affirmed the right to use force unilaterally, but only if confined by rules:

To begin with, I believe that all nations – strong and weak alike – must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I – like any head of state – reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates – and weakens – those who don't.

The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait – a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.

Furthermore, America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don't, our action can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention – no matter how justified.

(Here were two points I emphatically reject:  First, the world did not rally behind America after the 9/11 attacks--the Arab world was silent, except for the Palestinians, who danced in the streets.  Only in Tehran, where one million people rallied in America's support, and, of course, in Israel, did Mideast denizens rally to our side.  Second, abiding by the rules, as LFTC has often noted, undermines Geneva's principle of reciprocity--destroying Geneva in order to save it.  And torture to prevent a WMD catastrophe is hardly wrong--I would call it a moral imperative.)

He called holy wars always unjust, because they are inevitably fought without any civilized restraint:

And most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint -- no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but I believe it's incompatible with the very purpose of faith -- for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

He then affirmed three principles (I will use quote marks here):

1.  Develop Tough Alternatives to Violence.  "First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to change behavior – for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure – and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.

2.  Lasting Peace is Based Upon Human Rights and Dignity.  "This brings me to a second point – the nature of the peace that we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting."

3.  Basic Human Rights Include Economic Rights.  "Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights – it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want."

The President's first principle is, I believe, quixotic, as international institutions show little serious sign of being up to enforcing meaningful rules against the planet's worst regimes.  His second principle is absolutely correct.  His third principle restates what socialist Europe introduced into the UN's panoply of rights.  Such rights encourage justification for authoritarian governance to achieve such goals.   They are better termed legitimate aspirations.

"Me-Bomb" Manners.  The Guardian reports that "The One" has infuriated his Norwegian hosts by his cavalier treatment of his Peace Prize visit.  Get a load of this:

Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.

The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children's event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.

According to a poll published by the daily tabloid VG, 44% of Norwegians believe it was rude of Obama to cancel his scheduled lunch with King Harald, with only 34% saying they believe it was acceptable.

Now, to be fair, The One (and spouse) also turned down dinner with the Sarkozys in Paris, while staying across the street from the Elysee Palace after the D-Day commemoration ceremonies.

As for those fine fellows on the Nobel Committee, what did they think they were getting?  Didn't they notice the "Hi, it's me!" Berlin rock-star speech of July 2008?  The fake Roman pillars at the August 2008 Denver Democratic Convention?  The snubbing of England's Prime Minister?  Skipping dinner with the Sarkozys?  True, The One did bow to the Japanese Emperor. But His Royal Highness is (well, almost) divine...as in, almost divine like the enlightened Nobel Ones who picked The One to snub The Cowboy.  The Cowboy, had he been chosen, would surely not have snubbed the Nobel Ones--but they, lefty to the core, would prefer being snubbed by The One.  In other words, the Nobel Ignobles got exactly what they deserved.

"Me-Bomb" Keyboard Coda.  Rock-star classical pianist Lang Lang played Franz Liszt's Liebestraum ("Lover's Dream") to finish the on-stage ceremony.  Here is an earlier clip (5:01) of Lang Lang playing the composition.  Both yesterday and in the earlier clip LL's histrionics are distracting, with extremes of "artistic ecstasy" crossing his visage.  Also he uses extremes of loud-soft ("dynamics" in pianist parlance).  For a far better version, with dignified presentation and superior interpretation in terms of pace and dynamics, listen to the legendary Artur Rubinstein's mid-1940s clip (4:50), taped at his home in Hollywood.

Bottom Line.  On balance, President Obama rose--more than rose--to the occasion.  While I would quarrel with many specific points, telling Scandinavian peaceniks--in Nobel Peacenik Paradise, no less--that lethal force--even, at times, its unilateral use--is necessary, is a worthy accomplishment.  Saluting America's military as peacemakers was terrific.  True, his delaying his Afghan War troop speech until last week forced him to say something in his Nobel address, but he did not have to be as forceful as he was.  OK, he wasn't Winston Churchill; but he wasn't Ward Churchill either.  For that he deserves credit.  Now, if we can only improve the President's manners when dealing with allies....

LFTC - Pakistan's Islamist Wild Card

This disturbing Globe & Mail op-ed by a Pakistani warns that pro-Isalmist elements in Pakistan's military are seeking to destabilize the elected civilian government.  The writer blames the US Congress for conditioning future US aid to Pakistan on a stepped-up effort against the Taliban & al-Qaeda.  Thus the US is between the ultimate strategic rock & hard place inside Pakistan: either let the civilian government cease its offensive against the Islamsits, or Islamist elements inside Pakistan's military will stage a coup and thus gain access to nuclear weapons.

LFTC - Pressuring Pakistan

the New York Times reports that Team Obama is pressing Pakistan to attack two key groups hiding in the tribal frontier lands--Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani Network.  This reflects their conclusion--likely correct--that without more pressure on militants hiding inside Pakistan the Afghan War is not winnable.

LFTC - SEALs Court-Martial: Will Lawfare Trump Warfare?

Human Events editor Jed Babbin urges superiors in the Navy to overrule the commander who plans to proceed with court-martial of three Navy SEALs accused of smacking a terrorist leader they captured.  JB details how at every stage when a mere reprimand might have settled the controversy, lawyers intervened to press for vindication of the legal system, regardless of the national security impact.  That no country ever won a war because it had a superior legal system escapes Lawfare advocates and, more dangerously, some military commanders too.

LFTC - IRAN: Closing in on a Nuclear Pearl Harbor?

As we remember the heroes who gave their lives 68 years ago at Pearl Harbor, Iran's President says Iran will pursue enhanced uranium enrichment on its own.  Specifically, the NYT reports:

Uranium enriched to 20 percent can fuel a reactor and also marks the dividing line between what nuclear specialists call low-enriched uranium and high-enriched uranium.

At the 20 percent level, Iran could, in theory, make an extremely crude and heavy nuclear weapon. The bigger threat would be that its enrichment could quickly accelerate from there to the much higher grade of fuel — enriched to 90 percent — typically used in modern nuclear warheads.

Iran has said the 20 percent uranium is needed for a reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes. The country denies that it has any intention of developing nuclear arms, and Mr. Ahmadinejad has not threatened to turn its current stockpile of enriched uranium into bomb fuel.

But his new declaration came just days after Iran angrily rejected demands that it shut down a once secret enrichment plant, and instead vowed to build 10 more. Mr. Ahmadinejad also announced that his cabinet would study what Iran needed to enrich its existing stockpile of uranium.

Two nuclear experts explained enrichment levels in practical terms:

A weapon made with 20 percent enriched fuel would be unwieldy compared with one made from 80 percent or 90 percent enriched fuel — what experts often call weapons grade.

“It’s hundreds of kilograms that would be needed, versus a few tens of kilograms at 90 percent,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation. “At 20 percent, a weapon would be doable but impractical” because of its gargantuan size. He called it “a monster.”

Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist in the nuclear program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that tracks atomic arsenals, said Iran would need more uranium that it currently possesses to make a bomb whose fuel was enriched to only 20 percent.

“That’s not the risk,” he said. “The risk is that it would be relatively easy for Iran to further enrich that material to something that is usable in a nuclear weapon.”

Iran rejected the deal to ship its uranium to Russia, asserting that it feared confiscation of their supply.

Ahmadinutjob also says that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is acting illegally in pressing Iran for its nuclear program gamesmanship.  He says Iran is legally entitled to enrich to 20 percent.  Friday Iran informed the IAEA that it will withhold disclosure on its ten new planned plants until six months before they begin operation, a position in violation of its prior commitments to the IAEA.

Russia may be cooling its heels slightly due to Iran's rejection of the deal for Russia to enrich Iranian uranium, writes Alan Philips.  Philips sees PM Vladimir Putin's position slipping due to economic woes, and President Dmitri Medvedev's position rising, with the latter less of a risk-taker:

There are objective reasons for the Russians to be angry with Iran, and to ditch their previous reticence about sanctions. These factors coincide with a subtle change in the balance of power inside Russia between Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev. Mr Putin hand-picked his successor, having eliminated all other rivals, and it was generally assumed that Mr Medvedev would be keeping the seat warm for him to return to the presidency in 2012.

But Putinism is losing its appeal. During his eight years in power as president, Mr Putin restored order and prosperity to Russia after the chaos of the 1990s. Real incomes doubled. But the financial crisis has cut living standards, slashed economic output and seen the state’s wealth pumped into bailouts of pro-Kremlin oligarchs and doomed industrial behemoths.

The contract between Mr Putin and the people is fraying. In Moscow people increasingly do not bother to vote in elections. All this has given Mr Medvedev some space to manoeuvre. No one is expecting a revolution, but over the course of four or five years it is easy to see that Mr Putin will become a spent force. Mr Medvedev is a cautious man. Despite his elevated office, he is often dismissed not as a decision-maker but as “a well-known Russian blogger”. It is far from certain that he is in a position to benefit from the troubles of his political godfather.

Ultimately, I see the rebalancing of forces in Russia as subtle rather than game-changing, and likely to be played out over a long period.

The Wall Street Journal editors see global reach to Iran's crackdown.  Four million Iranians live abroad and are vulnerable, especially if the regime can threaten family members still inside Iran.

But an Iranian crackdown has its limits due to growing resistance.  Specifically, opposition leaders are not being purged, and the show trials planned are aimed at low-level people:

Moussavi’s acolytes go beyond the sons of Islamic revolutionaries. He was prime minister when Iran created Hezbollah in Lebanon and then traded Western hostages for arms in the Iran-Contra affair, and his connections reach into those parts of the Iranian state that are most lethal to the U.S. and its allies. Much is made of the Iran-Iraq war veterans and IRGC officers who have prospered under Ahmadinejad. Just as important is that many of those now in the regime’s higher echelons got their start under Moussavi. Plucking his friends and associates out of the works could cripple key parts of the state, especially at the level of those managing and implementing complex projects on the nuclear and missile front.

The signs of leadership vacillation are public. With great fanfare, the regime has launched five show trials of hundreds of people, sentenced five men to die, and given others jail terms. The regime is considering legal action against Mehdi Karrubi, a twice-defeated presidential candidate, for revealing the rape of prisoners after June 12. Many of the show-trial defendants are well-known writers, academics, and former officials with reformist ideas and are associated with the ineffectual Khatami. These intellectuals have not been involved in organizing protests, nor do they have the foreign connections described in paranoid detail by the prosecution. In their coerced statements, they have fingered Moussavi, Khatami, Karrubi, and others as the culprits behind the post–June 12 unrest. Yet instead of heralding a grand show trial for Moussavi, Khamenei has backed away. In a remarkable intervention on August 27, he said, “I do not accuse the leaders of the recent incidents to be subordinate to the foreigners, like the United States and Britain, since this issue has not been proven for me.”

So the regime is slowly feeling its way forward, using standard repressive techniques that contain the conflagration without quite dousing the flames. Some of the best-known prisoners, such as former vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi, have been convicted of the serious crime of seeking to overthrow the state—and then released on bail. The challenge facing Khamenei is both simple and intractable: with no purge, instability will continue, but with a purge, the regime can undermine itself in a way that no real or imagined CIA plot ever could.

A newly resurgent Syria is no help to efforts to reign in Iran.  Success in Syria after the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005) would have helped undermine Iran.  But that is not in the cards now.  And Iran continues to supply Hezbollah, in league with North Korea and in defiance of UN sanctions.  So Team Obama continues to prop up the North, writes Gordon Chang in Forbes, instead of withdrawing support and forcing China to carry the full burden of underwriting the North's rogue-sate antics.

Oh, Iran over the weekend said it will go for twenty--yes, 20!--not a mere ten (so yesterday!) new uranium enrichment plants.  Let the bidding begin...do I hear 25?...25, going once...the lady in the corner says 30!!...yes, that's 30!!, do I hear 35....40...do I see a mushroom cloud....

A Game at Harvard.  David Ignatius reports on having played in an Iran war game last week at Harvard.  Team Iran, by his lights, beat Team America:

How will the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program evolve during the next year? If a simulation game played at Harvard last week is any guide, the situation won't look pretty: Iran will be closer to having the bomb, and America will fail to obtain tough U.N. sanctions; diplomatic relations with Russia, China and Europe will be strained; and Israel will be threatening unilateral military action.

My scorecard had Team Iran as the winner and Team America as the loser. The U.S. team -- unable to stop the Iranian nuclear program and unwilling to go to war -- concluded the game by embracing a strategy of containment and deterrence. The Iranian team wound up with Russia and China as its diplomatic protectors. And the Israeli team ended in a sharp break with Washington.

Foggy Bottom's Fog.  Apropos of war games at Harvard, consider the different positions taken by former top State Dept. diplomat Nicholas Burns, who role-played President Obama, and former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold, who played Israeli PM Netanyahu:

The two key players agreed later that the simulation highlighted real tensions that the two countries need to understand better. "The most difficult problem we have is how to restrain Israel," said Burns. "My own view is that we need to play for a long-term solution, avoid a third war in the Greater Middle East and wear down the Iranians over time."

Gold said the game clarified for him a worrying difference of opinion between U.S. and Israeli leaders: "The U.S. is moving away from preventing a nuclear Iran to containing a nuclear Iran -- with deterrence based on the Cold War experience. That became clear in the simulation. Israel, in contrast, still believes a nuclear Iran must be prevented."

The game showed that diplomacy will become much harder next year. As Burns explains: "The U.S. probably will get no help from Russia and China, Iran will be divided and immobile, Europe will be weak, and the U.S. may have to restrain Israel."

WRONG--WRONG SQUARED!!!!  Memo to the Hon. N. Burns, from LFTC: Israel is our close ally; Iran is our deadly enemy.  Allies--real allies (i.e., those who fight alongside us)--are assets; enemies are liabilities, on our foreign policy balance sheet.  Twisting the arm of allies and placating enemies is a topsy-turvy world-view.  The main threat to the Mideast comes from a militant Islamic state ISO nuclear weapons, not the one nation that might stop them.

Bottom Line.  We fecklessly negotiate with Iranian diplomats, as our forbears negotiated with Japan's diplomats--right up to when the attack on Pearl Harbor began.

LFTC - Pakistan: Drone Drama

This NY Times front-pager last week frames well the complex drama surrounding Predator drone strikes in Pakistan.  Consider this odd trifecta of Pakistani attitudes: (a) the public living outside the tribal areas hates them; (b) the people living in the tribal areas praise them; (c) tribal leaders dislike them.  This last one suggests that tribal leaders have interests divergent from those of their flocks.  The article is well worth a full read, and portrays the complex tapestry of attitudes.  Meanwhile, the NYT also reported that Islamist militants bombed a mosque in Rawalpindi frequented by the Pakistani military.

LFTC - Afghan Aftermath: An Expert's Take, A Surprise Salute

National security maven and ex-Bush-43 official Eliot Cohen finds 44's speech wanting.  He focuses on three points:

When it comes to President Barack Obama's long-awaited decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, there are three main points to consider: the decision itself, the manner in which he made it, and the way in which he sold it.

Read what is the best compact assessment I have seen of the President's speech and problems he faces going forward.

And note also that 44 got kudos from a source he may not have counted upon: Sarah Palin, whose Afghanistan Facebook entry praises the President.

LFTC - Pakistan's Nukes: Change of Control; Chavismo Goes Nuclear

Last weekend Pakistan announced that command & control over its nuclear arsenal (est. 60-100 weapons) was transferred from its Prime Minster to its President.  Prime Minster Zardari faces investigations, plus pressure to cede power accumulated by his predecessor, General Musharraf.  A Wall Street Journal editorial adds important detail:

Pakistan set up the NCA in 2000, two years after it conducted nuclear tests. Gen. Musharraf introduced the reconciliation ordinance in 2007.

But the transfer of authority to the prime minister won't make much practical difference because Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program is effectively controlled by Pakistan's powerful military.

People familiar with the matter said the military was uneasy with Mr. Zardari's control of the country's nuclear weapons because it views him as too close to the U.S.They said Mr. Zardari was too dependent on Washington and sometimes wasn't in agreement with the strategic views of the military.

"There has not been a single meeting of NCA since Mr. Zardari became president, which possibly shows the military leadership was uncomfortable with him handling the country's nuclear program," said Mr. Rizvi, the defense analyst.

Last year, Mr. Zardari said Pakistan wouldn't make the first use of nuclear weapons if it were at war with India, a position that wasn't in agreement with Pakistan's nuclear doctrine.

Rickety governance in nuclear-armed Pakistan, under siege by Islamists, is yet another reason that American withdrawal from Afghanistan without some form of successful outcome carries huge risks.  Pakistanis reacted warily to 44's Afghan address, expressing deep concern about American motives.

Hugo Chavez's Criminal Nuclear Network: A Grave and Growing Threat (Oct. 2009), by Roger Noriega of the American Enterprise Institute, examines Venezuelan thug-terrorist Hugo Chavez's growing involvement in matters nuclear--specifically, supplying Iran with uranium and entering into a nuclear deal with Russia for "peaceful nuclear" activities.  Forbes reports that Russia is selling advanced arms & building arms plants.  Most notable is the advanced S-300 air & missile defense system that Iran wishes to purchase.  Yet more reasons to seek regime change in Caracas.

LFTC - Nation-Bulding Update: Iraq & Kosovo Upbeat

Reuters reports that violence in Iraq dropped in November to its lowest since the 2003 coalition invasion, with 88 deaths, the first under-100 toll in a war that has claimed over 100,000 Iraqi lives in 6+ years.  Terrorist groups are reserving their violence for spectacular attacks.

The Washington Post reports that Kosovo is more stable than forecast when its declared independence February 17, 2008, with Albanian violence against Serbs far lower than expected.  Elections are becoming routine despite a poor economy.  NATO's 14,000 troop peacekeeping force likely will be drawn down about 1/3 next year.

LFTC - Obama's Muslim Miss; Islam's Swiss Miss

Obama's Muslim Miss.  Mideast maven Fouad Ajami writes that The One's aura is gone in the Muslim communities.  He cites poll numbers that bring the Obama Legend down to Earth:

It was the norm for American liberalism during the Bush years to brandish the Pew Global Attitudes survey that told of America's decline in the eyes of foreign nations. Foreigners were saying what the liberals wanted said.

Now those surveys of 2009 bring findings from the world of Islam that confirm that the animus toward America has not been radically changed by the ascendancy of Mr. Obama. In the Palestinian territories, 15% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 82% have an unfavorable view. The Obama speech in Ankara didn't seem to help in Turkey, where the favorables are 14% and those unreconciled, 69%. In Egypt, a country that's reaped nearly 40 years of American aid, things stayed roughly the same: 27% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 70% do not. In Pakistan, a place of great consequence for American power, our standing has deteriorated: The unfavorables rose from 63% in 2008 to 68% this year.

Ajami explains why 44's apology offensive abroad has backfired in Muslim lands:

Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.

The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity. "My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger," goes one of the Arab world's most honored maxims. The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.

Islam's Swiss Miss.  Meanwhile, the AP reports on that voters in Switzerland amended their country's Constitution to prohibit building more minarets (towers from which Muslim prayer calls are issued).  AP offers the key numbers and detail behind voter angst:

The referendum by the nationalist Swiss People's Party labeled minarets as symbols of rising Muslim political power that could one day transform Switzerland into an Islamic nation. The initiative was approved 57.5 to 42.5 percent by some 2.67 million voters. Only four of the 26 cantons or states opposed the initiative, granting the double approval that makes it part of the Swiss constitution.

Muslims comprise about 6 percent of Switzerland's 7.5 million people. Many are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and about one in 10 actively practices their religion, the government says.

The country's four standing minarets, which won't be affected by the ban, do not traditionally broadcast the call to prayer outside their own buildings.

The sponsors of the initiative provoked complaints of bias from local officials and human-rights group with campaign posters that showed minarets rising like missiles from the Swiss flag next to a fully veiled woman. Backers said the growing Muslim population was straining the country "because Muslims don't just practice religion."

"The minaret is a sign of political power and demand, comparable with whole-body covering by the burqa, tolerance of forced marriage and genital mutilation of girls," the sponsors said. They noted that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has compared mosques to Islam's military barracks and called "the minarets our bayonets."

Mideast maven David Pryce-Jones offers background, plus a vital--but rare--demand the Swiss made upon the Muslim community:

The ban follows quite a bit of contention which started when the king of Saudi Arabia bought a house on the shore of Lake Geneva. Launching a building program without first obtaining the requisite permits, he was obliged to stop and pull down extensions. Geneva already had a mosque, and when the Saudis wanted to build another one, the city fathers replied that permission would be granted only when the Saudis reciprocated by allowing the building of a church in Saudi Arabia. Also following the brief arrest of his charmless son, Colonel Gaddhafi, the Libyan dictator,  uttered such threats that the authorities quickly and abjectly apologized.

But the Wall Street Journal editors see ostrich behavior in the Swiss vote:

But what message, exactly? The vote betrays an undercurrent of fear among the Swiss—a fear that is not without cause. There is no denying the connection between radical imams and terrorist acts. Nor should anyone look away from the fact that too many European Muslims flatly reject the norms of their host countries, sometimes in ways that are criminal: honor killings, child brides and the like.

Yet banning minarets does nothing to address that fear. It merely makes it less likely that the average Swiss will be confronted by a visible symbol of Islam upon his skyline. Thus, even as a symbolic gesture, it seems to encourage a head-in-the-sand approach toward the 5% of Swiss who are Muslim. In much of Europe, this is the norm anyway, the result of political correctness and cowardice.

Rather than being a blow against that attitude, Sunday's vote seems only to reinforce it. Banning minarets won't do anything to assimilate Switzerland's or Europe's Muslims, or to ensure that economic opportunity is available to everyone of whatever creed, or to deal with Western Europe's demographic problem of too few newborns.

Bottom Line. The One's greatest liability is not his leftism, though that is bad enough.  It is his monumental self-infatuation.  He truly sees himself as a world transformational figure.  I am reminded of the famous quip pianist Oscar Levant made to his close friend, pianist/composer George Gershwin: "George, if you had it do to all over again, would you fall in love with yourself?"  Gershwin probably would have, but then again, Gershwin had more reason to be impressed with himself than does 44.  Gershwin's achievements went beyond self-advancement, producing lasting artistic treasures for the world.  44 is not on track to match that.  And hence less self-regard is in order--coupled with, one hopes, more realism.  One form of such realism is to see what animated the Swiss voter revolt against the country's elites, as to politically correct views of Islam.

LFTC - IRAN: Taking Britain Hostage Again

The Washington Post reports that Iran seized five British sailboat racers who allegedly strayed into Iranian waters.  Such a provocative action taken at a time when nuclear negotiations are coming apart signals anew that Iran is confident nothing will stop it from crossing the nuclear threshold formally.  Two years ago Iran took British sailors hostages for a fortnight, and Tony Blair's government caved.  Gordon Brown figures to cave, too.  The mullahs are toying with the West, with increasing impunity.  All of which brings once again to mind the late Senator Patrick Moynihan's warning that "We court great danger when we invite the contempt of totalitarians."

We should instead give support to the likes of the Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, Iran's leading opposition cleric, who denounced the role of the Basij militia in recent violence by the regime against peaceful demonstrators; the Basij are the most extreme element of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.  Ayatollah Montazeri said on Monday: “Why do you beat people?  Because they do not accept what you say?  Basij was founded to act within the path of God, not Satan.  Isn’t it unfortunate to go to hell for the benefits of others?”

LFTC - Afghan War: Brits Brace "Bam; Germans Brace Germans; ICC & ICRC Brace US

Britain.  When Britain's defense secretary braces our President, you know we have a problem.  With 70 percent of British voters (estimates from NY Times reporter John Burns, given to CNN "American Morning") our transformative President is transforming opinion in the country that has been our closest ally for much of the period since FDR & Winston Churchill cemented the "special relationship" in 1941.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Senior British Government sources have become increasingly frustrated with Mr Obama’s “dithering” on Afghanistan, the Daily Telegraph disclosed earlier this month, with several former British defence chiefs echoing the concerns.

But Mr Ainsworth is the first Government minister to express in public what amounts to personal criticism of the US president’s leadership over the conflict which has so far cost 235 British lives.
Polls show most voters now want an early withdrawal, following the death of 98 British service personnel this year alone.

Britain's 235 dead, for a country of 61M population, 1/5 of America's total, equates to an American toll of 1,175 on a per capita equivalent basis; America's actual Afghan war KIA is 928, 4 times the UK's total.  This explains why British voters are unhappy:

Mr Ainsworth, speaking to MPs at the defence committe in the House of Commons, welcomed that troop 'surge' decision, but lamented the time taken to reach it.

He said that the rising British death toll, the corruption of the Afghan government and the delay in Washington all hamper efforts to retain public backing for the deployment.

“We have suffered a lot of losses," he said. "We have had a period of hiatus while McChrystal's plan and his requested uplift has been looked at in the detail to which it has been looked at over a period of some months, and we have had the Afghan elections, which have been far from perfect let us say.

“All of those things have mitigated against our ability to show progress... put that on the other side of the scales when we are suffering the kind of losses that we are."

Britain has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan and has announced it will send another 500, a decision some US officials saw as a move to put pressure on Mr Obama.

Mr Ainsworth said he is confident that once Mr Obama confirms his new strategy, allies will follow and British public opinion will shift back in favour of the mission.

Germany.  Germany's Afghan Commander has resigned over disclosures that he was not fully candid about collateral casualties caused by a September 4 NATO air strike.

International Criminal Court (ICC).  The chief prosecutor of the UN's ICC plans to investigate American and allied military conduct in the Afghan War, validating fears that ICC Lawfare will target NATO warfare--even American actions, despite America having declined to ratify the ICC.  (To date: Team Obama may reverse this position).

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).  The New York Times spotlights a "black jail" run by Special Ops in Afghanistan. The facility holds detainees who are interrogated without access to lawyers or Red Cross, for a period now restricted to a fortnight.  The NYT story is clearly unsympathetic, but is worth a read anyway.  These types of facilities should be reserved for HVTs--High-Value Targets--only.

Bottom Line.  Public vacillation by President Obama has been undermining support among voters in the country which has supplied more troops than any other to fight alongside us.  German voters need no outside help to undermine their own troops in the field.  And the UN is undermining international security, as ever.

LFTC - Nuclear Proliferation: Mythology's Dangers

Recently SecState Hillary Clinton offered her thoughts on principles to guide nuclear nonproliferation policy.  She recognizes that the current nonproliferation regime is in peril:

Recent developments underscore the threat. The international community failed to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. Iran continues to ignore resolutions from the U.N. Security Council demanding that it suspend its enrichment activities and live up to its international obligations. Too much of the world's nuclear material remains vulnerable to theft or diversion, even as illicit state and nonstate networks engage in sensitive nuclear trade. And as we saw with the failure to detect Iran's covert enrichment plant and Syria's reactor project, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) doesn't have the tools to carry out its verification mission effectively.

If we do not reverse this trend and strengthen the international nonproliferation regime, we will find ourselves in a world with a steadily growing number of nuclear-armed states, and an increasing likelihood of terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons.

She also noted that President 44's goal of ultimate total nuclear abolition (a goal shared by every President who has held office in the Atomic Age) is a long way off:

As the president has acknowledged, we might not achieve the dream of a world without nuclear weapons in our lifetime. But by making the reduction of nuclear threats one of our highest national priorities and by reaching out to a diverse group of international partners, we can help build and lead a unified international effort that will make us safer and stronger.

Where she falls down--as does the President--is with the idea that America and other nuclear-armed states must lead by example in reducing their existing stockpiles:

To improve our standing to build broad international support for pursuing these means of strengthening the nonproliferation regime, the United States and the other nuclear-armed powers should fulfill their own obligation to reduce their nuclear stockpiles.

The problem with this is simply put: (1) America's nuclear weapons stockpile peaked in 1967; (2) the former Soviet Union's nuclear weapons stockpile peaked around 1980; (3) the other four major powers--Russia, Great Britain, France & China, which are the only signatory parties entitled to keep nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), subject only to a "good faith' effort to ultimately fully disarm--are now modernizing, and in some cases, increasing, their nuclear weapons inventory.

These issues are superbly analyzed in detail in "Nuclear Disarmament, Nonproliferation and the 'Credibility' Thesis" (September 2009, 19 pages), a superb white paper by Hudson Institute scholar Christopher Ford, who held a senior State Department arms control post in the prior administration.  Ford addresses in detail the thesis that America has failed to lead by example.  In fact, as American and Russian disarmament accelerated after the signing of the INF Treaty in December 1987, the first arms treaty in which the signatories agreed to eliminate an entire class of weapons (Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles and cruise missiles based in Europe)--proliferation efforts accelerated elsewhere.

Worse, while we argue the above domestically and with our allies, an Iran-Venezuelan axis of nuclear evil is emerging in the southern hemisphere.  A second Cuban Missile Crisis may yet be in our future.  Iran maven Ruy Takeyh sees Iran using the nuclear issue to shield its rulers from human rights pressure, and thus preserve the regime and its perceived legitimacy.  SO on the 30th anniversary of Iran's taking our embassy, President Obama avows not to "intervene in Iran's internal affairs"--code-speak for ignoring repression at all costs.  WSJ editors note that, plus the contempt Obama has earned from the democratic opposition:

But the opposition's dreams of American support, moral as much as anything, have been dashed. Mr. Obama was slow and reluctant to speak out on their behalf and eager to engage the Iranian regime in nuclear talks as soon as the summer of protest tapered off. Iran's democrats are now letting their disappointment show. The new chant passed around in Internet chat rooms and heard in the streets yesterday was, "Obama, Obama—either you're with them or with us."

Knowing the opposition was planning to march, Mr. Obama issued his own statement the night before that instead chose to reach out to the regime. America, he said, "seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interest and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran's internal affairs." He went on to list the Administration's various efforts to appease the regime. So far and on all counts, the mullahs have rebuffed these entreaties.

Bottom Line.  Embracing mythic history of the Atomic Age can lead us dangerously astray.  Instead of almost obsessively focusing on further superpower disarmament we must focus on emerging rogue proliferators, and not deceive ourselves into believing that by "setting an example" the world's most dangerous regimes will follow.  The contrary is far more likely.  For the world's worst proliferators there is but one viable solution: regime change.

LFTC - Barack's "Guardian Angell"

This TAS piece on British pacifist Norman Angell, 1933 Nobel Peace Laureate, sees 44 following Angell's lead. Alas, this is another way in which the lessons of 1989 are lost on our novice President.

LFTC - Berlin 1989 + 20

Begin by savoring a clip of President Ronald Reagan's 1987 Berlin address (3:59) (full text) in which he called for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down that wall!"  Then savor the 1963 clip of JFK's "Ich bin ein Berliner!" speech (4:41).  (For full text of JFK speech scroll down in this link.)  Both were cheered heartily by the Berliners.  As LFTC has earlier noted, JFK's translators blew it.  In German, "ein Berliner" is a dough-nut, and thus JFK said "I am a dough-nut!"  But Berliners, who say "Ich bin Berliner" to indicate residency there, cheerfully let it pass.  JFK immediately followed with "I appreciate my interpreter translating my German" and at the end repeated his formulation.  JFK did better later on in his speech, proclaiming "Lach sie nach Berlin kommen!"--proper German for the theme of his speech that day: calling to those searching for where the center of the struggle between freedom and tyranny lay by proclaiming "Let them come to Berlin!"

Rich Lowry of NRO explains why Barack Obama is skipping the 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  In a nutshell, 44 is just not, as they say, into it.  It's not a "liberal thing": Liberal columnist Pete Hamill recounts his Berlin Wall journeys, then and now.  Euro-historian Timothy Garton Ash looks back at 1989 and sees in what he calls Europe's greatest year ever the continent's greatest triumph (freeing Eastern Europe), that year's greatest surprise (China) and tragedy emerging from the chrysalis (Islamism's fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie, presaging 9/11/2001), all at the same time, in the world's most consequential year since 1945:

In 1989, Europeans proposed a new model of nonviolent, velvet revolution, challenging the violent example of France in 1789, which for two centuries had been what most people thought of as "revolution." Instead of Jacobins and the guillotine, they offered people power and negotiations at a round table.

With Mikhail S. Gorbachev's breathtaking renunciation of the use of force (a luminous example of the importance of the individual in history), a nuclear-armed empire -- which had seemed to many Europeans as enduring and impregnable as the Alps, not least because it possessed those weapons of total annihilation -- just softly and suddenly vanished.

But then, as if this were all somehow too good to be true, 1989 also brought us Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa on Salman Rushdie -- firing the starting gun for another long struggle in Europe, even before the last one was really over.

Daily Telegraph columnist Janet Daley says the West has failed to learn the economic lesson of 1989, i.e., that Marxism had to eventually collapse but a true capitalist system will endure.  A WSJ op-ed explains how Italy's conviction of 23 CIA officers for "rendering" from Italy to Egypt a terrorist wanted in Italy will undermine US-European cooperation in the hunt for terrorists.  Thus another 1989 lesson is lost: fight against the common enemy, not among ourselves.

Claudia Rosett explains why Obama's lack of understanding of how & why the Wall was dismantled impairs his ability to cope with today's challenges:

The threats besetting the world today involve essentially the same old conflict: freedom vs. tyranny. Today's variations on the Berlin Wall can be discerned in places where women face the coerced wearing of the veil; in the prison camps and firewalls of China; in the gulag and murderous border patrols of North Korea; in the rising police state in Russia; the missionary thuggery of Venezuela's Chavista "revolution"; the global tentacles of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and al-Qaida; the security forces that murdered protesters this spring in the streets of Tehran.

Today's Wall looms in such ventures as the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, both involving not only the potential use of monstrous weapons by murderous regimes, but nuclear extortionist leverage--which these regimes are already using to bring free nations to heel.

In the matter of facing down such threats, the Cold War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, has plenty to teach--especially to a free world with current leaders too much given to disparaging capitalism and downplaying freedom.

CR adds:

The West has by now traveled a long road--from Reagan, who demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," to Obama, who in Berlin last year recast this piece of history as one big group hug: "A wall came down, a continent came together and history proved there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."

Unfortunately, it is not the world standing "as one" that brings down such walls. There has always been good and evil. The attempt to straddle such divides, as Washington is now doing with Tehran, is an invitation to be torn apart. The Berlin Wall fell because brave people--on both sides of it--took a clear stand against tyrants and for freedom. That's still how the world works, and America's own fortunes still depend on whether our leaders live up to the principles that brought down the Berlin Wall, or sideline them as yesterday's news.

Here is an NRO symposium (prints 5 pages) on the anniversary.  Historian David Pryce-Jones recalls the role accident played in the fall of the Wall.  This William Buckley NRO link offers WFB's elegant takes on the event, from his book on the subject.

Ex-Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson recalls the joy in Berlin then, and the inspiration Reagan's call had given to those captive behind the Wall:

Ronald Reagan, I recognized in that Berlin hotel room, had given something to people in the East, something difficult to describe but tangible all the same. In predicting that Communism would end up on the ash heap of history, in describing the Soviet Union as an evil empire--in insisting that the West remained fundamentally vibrant and good, the Soviet Union backward and corrupt--Reagan had spoken the unspeakable. He had done what no one could do. And he had thus created for people in the East a new space for thought and feeling, a new sense of the possible.

Reagan had never been alone in calling for freedom. Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and others had all denounced the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, demanding human rights. Yet if an American president could call on the leader of the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin Wall--if that could happen, if it were true--then what else might prove possible?

Ken Duberstein, then the White House deputy chief of staff, was in the limousine with Reagan as the president drove to the Wall to deliver the address. Years later, Duberstein told me what took place as they arrived. Reagan told Duberstein he was determined to deliver the controversial passage. Then the president smiled. "The boys at State are going to kill me," Reagan said. "But it's the right thing to do."

Alas, 44 seems to listen too much to "the boys (and girls) at State" to reprise with Iran what Reagan did over East Germany.  In a touch of pure irony, Reagan's 1987 Berlin call to Gorbachev came on Jun 12--the very date in 2009 that Iran's fraudulent election was held.  And 44 responded not like Reagan but like the striped-pants set at Foggy Bottom.

For her part, Angela Merkel expressed her thanks to America Tuesday last week, first at a White House photo op with 44, and then in her address to a joint session of the Congress (the first in over 50 years for a German leader).  Here is a neat Merkel quote from the address, for those pressed for time.

My own favorite recollection is another key moment, on October 25, 1989--just 15 days before the Wall was toppled.  Soviet spokesman Gennady Gerasimov announced on American TV that Moscow's new policy for Warsaw Pact nations was the "Frank Sinatra 'My Way' Doctrine"--each country could go its own way.  This sent a powerful signal to all Berliners.  And the rest was, as they say, history--1989 became annus mirabilis for all those who cherish expansion of human freedom within a framework of ordered liberty.

Bottom Line.  At the end of his Berlin speech, JFK proclaimed: "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin."  Had President Obama understood either JFK or Reagan, in their Berlin speeches, he today would proclaim everyone a citizen of Tehran, and make Tehran the locus of today's struggle for freedom.

LFTC - Afghan, Pakistani and American Betrayals

Last week's killing of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman they had been training shows how dirty a counter-insurgency campaign can get.  More such betrayals and an exit from Afghanistan becomes front-burner.  The enemy knows this.  A new book from a retired French magistrate alleges a Pakistani double-game betrayal of the CIA in the post-2001 wars.  But America is not only sinned against but also sinner: Team Obama's pullback from Iraqi internal affairs has left the UN mediating, which means fakery instead of competence; the result could prove political disaster, and unwind much of the benefit of America's hard-earned position in that country.

And it is Team Obama's deal with Moscow, over the head of Poland & Czech Republic, that has Eastern Europe fearing more betrayal by America.  Moscow intends to use its new-found diplomatic position with Team Obama as a basis for exercising vetoes over possible US moves in its former satellite Warsaw Pact territories.  Thus, Moscow has publicly objected to possible deployment of US troops in Poland (requested by Poland's foreign minister), and has warned that a new war may be brewing with Georgia, due to Georgia's refusal to recognize the independence of its two breakaway provinces, South Ossetia & Abkhazia.  That Russian meddling led to the breakaway, and that Russia's invasion was flatly illegal, premised upon its asserted, though non-existent, legal right to "protect" Russian minorities allegedly being abused in the provinces, does not disturb Moscow in the least.  They have an American fish on the hook, and intend to reel in as much as they can, lest they lose the big fish.

Bottom Line.  America can only combat betrayal by its allies if America itself does not betray allies.

LFTC - IRAN: 30th "America Held Hostage" Anniversary

Today marks exactly 30 years since the then newly-minted Islamic Republic of Iran, under the ghastly Ayatollah Khomeini, seized the American embassy and took 52 diplomats hostage, beginning a siege that would last 444 days, until the day before Ronald Reagan was sworn in as America's 40th President.  Major opposition rallies were announced earlier this week; the Los Angeles Times reports that there were violent clashes in Tehran, though demonstrations were smaller than right after the June 12 election.  Two Iranian opposition figures excoriate President Obama for his failure to support democratic opposition to the regime.  Iran is skirting sanctions and stepping up uranium mine production.

The Washington Post reports that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dismissed the idea of top-level talks with President Obama:

Iran's supreme leader, spurning what he described as several personal overtures from President Obama, warned Tuesday that negotiating with the United States would be "naive and perverted" and that Iranian politicians should not be "deceived" into starting such talks.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 70, said Obama has approached him several times through oral and written messages. It was the second time that Khamenei, who wields ultimate political and religious authority in Iran, has referred to the president's outreach.

The White House has not confirmed sending letters to the Iranian supreme leader but has acknowledged a willingness to talk to Tehran and said it has sought to communicate with Iranian leaders in a variety of ways.

In his harshest comments yet on the Obama administration, Khamenei said in a speech Tuesday that the United States has ill intentions toward Iran and is not to be trusted.

"The new U.S. president has said nice things," he said. "He has given us many spoken and written messages and said: 'Let's turn the page and create a new situation. Let's cooperate with each other in resolving world problems.' "

Thus, in reality, America is still held hostage.  The New York Times reports that internal political division within Iran is holding back possible resolution of nuclear talks.  The Times goes further with this gem:

Another factor working against acceptance of the deal involves the widely held sentiment that Iran cannot trust the West, or Russia, which would first receive the uranium from Iran, to abide by the terms of any deal.

Even by the NYT's standards (low) this is a winner: Iran, which concealed an illegal nuclear program for 18 years, and had repeatedly lied in the 7 years since its program was discovered, does not trust the West to keep a bargain.  In the event, the NYT article ignores that Iran's political leadership is not so divided as to stop uranium enrichment within the country.

The Christain Science Monitor reports that Iran had already by February this year produced enough highly-enriched uranium (HEU) to produce one nuclear bomb.  At an estimated 2.75 kilograms of daily production at its Natanz facility Iran can produce enough HEU for a bomb per year.  This calculation does not include HEU produced at other sites, disclosed and undisclosed.

Bret Stephens chronicles the repeated "no" answers Iran has given to stopping its nuclear program.  He writes:

Yet even as Tehran's rejections piled up, a view developed that all would be well if only the U.S. would drop the harsh rhetoric and meet with the Iranians face-to-face. So President Obama began making one overture after another to Iran, including a videotaped message praising its "great civilization." Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei replied that Mr. Obama had "insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day."

Now American negotiators are dealing directly with their Iranian counterparts, which is just fine with Ahmadinejad. "As long as this government is in power, it will not retreat one iota on the undeniable rights of the Iranian nation," he said last week. "A few years ago, they said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities. Now look where we are today."

Bottom Line.  Thirty years ago America was held hostage for 444 days, a searing national humiliation.  Now we are being held hostage to a nuclear Iran, plaintively pursuing chimerical hopes that diplomacy will somehow save the day.  Jimmy Carter at least tried once to rescue the hostages.  That mission ended in abysmal failure.  The consequences of failure this time will prove far greater.  Yet President 44 seems disinclined to even make one serious effort to stop Iran.  The wages of defeat will be costlier this time.